Woman’s Slaying Perplexes Grieving Kin : Homicide: Nancy Concha Gamont was about to reunite with her husband when an assailant slit her throat.

The pastel-colored homes along Greenberry Drive, with their rain-green lawns and secure iron fences, lend an air of safety and stability to the quiet, working-class Valinda neighborhood.

But now fear haunts the street where, six days ago, 26-year-old Nancy Concha Gamont was found slain in her home. Her throat was slit, and her bedroom had been ransacked.

A teacher’s aide at a Christian school, Gamont had no enemies, family members say. And, often sewing baby clothes into the early morning hours to help pay the mortgage, she had precious little for anyone to steal.

Although separated for two months from her husband, Victor, the pair had planned to reunite. Then an unknown assailant broke into the Gamont home and killed her just hours before the planned reunion, police say.

Now, Gamont’s parents, brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews--all of whom live in houses on neighboring streets--huddle by day together in groups on the street and stay overnight at one another’s homes, fearful they may be next.

“It’s scary,” said Gamont’s sister-in-law, Aida, who asked that her last name be withheld. “We don’t understand who, how or why.

“You’d think this would happen in a movie, or in rich houses.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies, called at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday to the Gamont home in the 1400 block of Greenberry Drive, said the woman was lying face-down, fully clothed in a bathtub off the master bedroom.

Gamont tried to fight off her killer, Lt. Bill Sieber said. There were signs of a struggle, he said, declining to elaborate.

The killer broke in through the bedroom window in the single-story home and ransacked the room before making off with a few possessions, Sieber said. There are no suspects, he added.

The crime is especially shocking, because Gamont was murdered just when she had resolved major issues in her life and was exceptionally happy, Aida, her sister-in-law, said.

One of those issues was her job. Money was tight for Gamont and her husband, who were making payments on their first home and raising their 2-year-old son, Victor Jr.

Victor Gamont’s salary as a Los Angeles County animal control officer was supplemented by jobs she took at Baldwin Park Christian School, first as a part-time child care worker and then as a part-time janitor.

Nancy Gamont also sewed at night, staying up until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. piecing together baby outfits for a manufacturer. Aida said she would call every morning at 6:30 a.m. because Gamont, sometimes exhausted, would sleep through her buzzing alarm clock.

The week before her death, Gamont finally got a full-time job at the school as a teacher’s aide--meaning more money and a chance to work with children in the classroom.

“She was great with the kids here,” said North Selvey, the school’s principal and pastor of Living Hope Baptist Church in Baldwin Park. “She always had a smile, always a kind word. If you ever wanted to get your spirits pulled up, you could just be around Nancy.”

A second issue whose resolution death cut short was Gamont’s marriage.

Victor and Nancy Gamont grew up together in the same Greenberry Drive neighborhood where they lived as young marrieds, surrounded by the homes of loving relatives. They had been together since their teens, when a love-struck Victor--three years younger than 17-year-old Nancy--lied about his age to get a date.

The problems in their five-year marriage were not major, said Selvey, who counseled the couple. There were no arguments or violence, he said.

And the separation, itself, was not much of one. Victor Gamont stayed with his parents, who lived only a block away and cared for his son on his days off, including when the murder took place. The couple attended church together, took meals together and spent time learning to better talk to each other, Selvey said.

Last Monday, they decided to reunite, Selvey said. Victor Gamont was to move in again the next day.

“I had lunch with Victor (Monday) and he was so happy,” Selvey said. “Things were going so well. . . . Their attitudes had changed.”

The couple spent part of Monday evening together before Victor Gamont left for his parents’ home and his last night separated from his wife. The next time he saw her was Tuesday morning, after relatives broke down the door to the house when his wife failed to show up for work.

“I guess that thought hurts Victor so much, thinking he was going to be home the very next night,” Selvey said.

Relatives said Victor Gamont is too distraught to talk to reporters about his wife.

Funeral arrangements are pending after the coroner completes an autopsy. Meanwhile, schoolchildren and parents who knew Nancy Gamont have begun donating money to help pay for the costs, Selvey said. Last week, the schools’ third- and fourth-graders voted to give the $200 they had saved for a Sacramento field trip.

“Her death was a tremendous blow to all of us,” Selvey said.